More are buckling up in wake of seat-belt law

State police have issued more than 133,000 tickets for failure to wear safety belts since a new law took effect last year permitting authorities to stop vehicles in which drivers or passengers are not using seat restraints, officials said Tuesday.

The increase of more than 43,000 tickets, which carry $55 fines, from a year earlier was accompanied by a 9 percent rise in seat-belt use in Illinois and 63 fewer automobile-accident fatalities, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Four out of five drivers and their passengers now wear seat belts in Illinois, according to an IDOT study, but challenges remain. The compliance rate is lowest among 16- to- 34-year-old males, said IDOT spokesman Matt Vanover.

Still, the positive results fit the pattern in other states where laws that make failure to use a seat belt a primary offense for a traffic stop have increased use of the safety devices, saved lives, reduced injuries and cut health-care costs.

Under tough enforcement provisions enacted July 3, 2003, police in Illinois can pull over motorists because the drivers, front-seat passengers or children age 12 and younger in the back seat are not buckled. Drivers previously could be ticketed for failure to wear seat belts only if they were stopped for another traffic offense.

Officials credited the new law, and a high-profile "Click It or Ticket" enforcement campaign, with helping to lower the number of fatalities in automobile accidents from 725 in the first six months of 2003 to 662 during the same period this year.

Eighty-three percent of motorists wore safety belts during a seat-belt monitoring survey last month, IDOT said, a 7 percentage-point increase from the 76 percent of motorists wearing safety belts in a June 2003 survey.

"The good news is that the vast majority of Illinois drivers are wearing their belts. Hopefully the rate will improve further with more high-visibility enforcement," said Charles Hurley, vice president of the transportation safety group at the National Safety Council.

Hurley said teenagers and other high-risk drivers who refuse to obey the safety belt law are less likely to respond to educational efforts than they would to heightened enforcement and stiff fines at roadside safety checkpoints.

"Teens are often the first to crash and the last to buckle up," Hurley said.

State troopers issued 133,045 tickets for failure to use safety restraints between July 3, 2003, when the law took effect, and July 2 of this year, said Lt. Lincoln Hampton, a state police spokesman. Before the law was passed making non-use a primary cause to stop a vehicle, 89,878 tickets were issued from July 2002 to July 2003, Hampton said.

In McHenry County, tickets issued by sheriff's police for failure to wear a seat belt rose to 237 from 202 in the first year of the seat-belt law.

During the same period in Lake County, the number of seat-belt violations issued soared almost 70 percent, jumping to 1,157 from 682, according to Lake County Sgt. Christopher Thompson.

Thompson said word of mouth could play a role in the increasing number of people who are strapping themselves into their cars.

"What's the first thing you do when you get a speeding ticket?" he said. "You go home and tell your family, you go home and tell your friends, `I got a speeding ticket today."'

Enforcement zones are seen as a key to encouraging seat belt use. Typically, law enforcement agencies target a stretch of roadway, place signs warning motorists of an upcoming seat-belt enforcement zone and then set up a checkpoint farther down the road where violators are ticketed.

The next major crackdown will be Labor Day weekend, state officials said.

Seat belts are about 50 percent effective in preventing death in a motor-vehicle collision, but even more effective in preventing crippling injuries, according to officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But the federal government's interest in boosting seat belt usage is not only out of concern for human life. Economics play a role. For every person in the country, $800 in taxes each year goes to pay for medical and other costs associated with people not wearing seat belts, an agency official said.

"It's billions of dollars every year simply because people are not buckling up," he added.

Seat belt usage also means that while more crash victims are surviving, many are still suffering severe injuries, said Molly Hart, a spokeswoman for the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.